Sporting a big smile, a friendly countenance, and (for now) driving a taxi across Pullman, Ben Lockett is living the life he always wanted to live.

Born to citizens of the world, Ben has always had a heart for travelling. He has many fond memories of traveling abroad, one of which includes him losing his first tooth in Australia.

Ben was born and raised in a small town in Colorado for much of his adolescence, until his parents moved him and his siblings to the Lake District of England to attend high school.

Since then, he has lived and traveled across much of the world, having visited 115 different towns and cities and 16 different countries.

It was in high school in England when he met a girl originally from the Tri-Cities. He traveled abroad in Europe for a year, and then chased her back to Eastern Washington.

He then attended WSU Tri-Cities and eventually ended up in Pullman, studying business.

“I really have been using a lot of the skills that I learned in class,” he said.

Although education has since been pushed to the backburner, he has been successful despite not receiving his degree. Ben is a jack of all trades: he has been everything from a cider brewer to a web developer, from a man in the service industry to a founder of the Sigma Pi Fraternity on the WSU Pullman campus.

“I like to keep my hobbies fresh,” Ben explained.

One of his biggest goals, which he finally accomplished after five years, was to have a cider he helped brew on tap in Pullman. Cider House will be selling one of his brews.

“I really have had some of the most excellent opportunities. They seem to just fall into my lap,” Ben explained.

His more recent endeavors include opening a small resort with some of his colleagues on an Indonesian island. For now, they have only a small bungalow on the beach, but Ben and his business partners hope to expand and become established in that part of the world.

After the launch of College Cabs, Ben realized that being a cab driver could not only be interesting, but quite fun.

“It’s addicting, this socialness, this freedom, it’s really nice,” Ben said.

Of course Ben has seen interesting things as a taxi driver in Pullman. Not only does he have his regulars who ask for him when looking for a ride with College Cabs, but Ben has the opportunity to meet all sorts of individuals who make their way into his cab.

Ben is a popular man with much of his clientele.

“He makes it more of an experience, it’s above and beyond what any cab driver does,” Zane Larsen, CEO of College Cabs said.

Larsen sees Ben as a man who is not only sociable, but also an innovative and outgoing individual.

Ben, like many cab drivers, takes the time to get to know his passengers – no matter how short or long their stint in his taxi may be.

“I get a solid 10 minutes with a customer, and I get to know them. I get to spend time with them. I think I even make better friends with regulars than my co-workers,” he said.

The relatively short time with passengers is also one of the better things about his job.

“If I have a bad fare it, of course, only lasts ten minutes,” he said.

Ben remembers one evening when he received a particularly bizarre call. He was to pick up a woman at a hotel in Moscow, and bring her to Pullman. However, once they arrived to her location in Pullman, the woman in question remained in the car. She said the man inside the building would pay for the fare, yet he never came out to the taxi.

“It turns out she was a prostitute, and the man inside was probably her pimp,” he said.

To his surprise, Pullman police suddenly showed up, pulled the woman out of the backseat of his taxi, and arrested her.

When he isn’t driving taxis or being entrepreneurial, Ben likes to watch TEDTalks or read the latest novel that piques his interest. Yet unlike the rest of the world, he hasn’t jacked into the technological world and only just recently bought a laptop.

Ben will continue driving with College Cabs for this semester, before he departs in May for Indonesia.